Optical links provide high data transmission rates at low power, and thus present a viable solution for replacing ordinary copper interconnects between integrated circuits. Optical reception is based on capturing, using a photosensitive device such as a photodiode, a light signal that is generally encoded in a digital fashion, and which may have a power level as low as 10 μW. The photosensitive device for example generates a small current that is transformed by the optical receiver into a digital voltage signal.
A difficulty in optical data reception is to be able to accurately detect the low power optical signal. Indeed, the current generated by the data pulse of the optical signal may be as low as 10 μA.
There is thus a need in the art for an optical receiver having high sensitivity while maintaining low complexity and low power consumption.